As Congress considers competing House and Senate proposals meant to protect kids online, lawmakers have only to look to their states to understand the challenges in seeking to regulate kids’ social media usage without running afoul of the First Amendment.
States have already tried some of the same strategies Congress is considering, only to see those laws stopped by injunctions granted over free speech objections.
At issue in many of the court conflicts over age verification laws is the definition of the social media platforms themselves, with courts determining that by making exceptions for certain websites, states have shown their hand in restricting speech based on its content and the people authoring it.
Utah offers an example. Republican state Rep. Jordan Teuscher sponsored a law limiting design features that could cause minors to “have an addiction” to social media. He laid out the difficulty of drawing legislative lines around types of platforms.
“If you look at a company like Roblox … is that a social media company?” Teuscher said. “Well, we certainly have seen harm that’s being caused, but they don’t interact in any way like a Facebook does.”
